In a marketplace so cut-throat, Amazon sellers need every edge they can get to stand out. In the past, any seller could achieve measurable success just by uploading a few white background product shots and adding a couple of taglines to poorly designed Enhanced Brand Content. Today, however, the competition is growing fiercer with every minute.
Sellers need to make consistent efforts to be seen, heard, and remembered because customers are deliberately scrutinizing the origin of every product they’d like to buy. That’s why building a brand is becoming business-critical. It’s no longer a task you can keep pushing to the bottom of your to-do list.
Branding matters. Here’s why
With millions, if not billions trying to make their presence felt on the over-saturated Amazon marketplace, having a strong brand can truly make a difference.
When you sell in a competitive category, the space for communicating your brand values and ethics is limited because it’s also given to every one of your competitors. You are most likely competing against businesses that, on the surface, are selling the same thing. So the brand you build is the only real differentiator between your products and the competing products. Your brand values, ethics, and voice are unique to you, so they give you a competitive edge and allow you to capitalize on what sets you apart from everyone else.
Always remember that by selling products, you generate customers, but by building a brand, you create advocates. If you want the customers to keep coming back to you and new customers to find you, don’t just focus on selling products; build a brand.
Most overlooked branding opportunities
After working with Amazon sellers for the past seven years, we’ve realized that most of them are unaware of the excellent branding opportunities the platform presents.
Amazon gives businesses plenty of opportunities to establish themselves as brands customers can trust. The retail giant allows sellers to create their stores, promote their products, and even provide protection for registered brands that are selling on their platform. There are a host of options for highlighting brand differentiators so businesses can drive brand affinity and foster faster conversion.
#1: On the product detail page
Your copy, images, video, brand story, and A+ Content can all be your brand advocates. Invest some time and thought into incorporating your brand elements, values, and tone into your detail page.
Tips from our experts
- Your Amazon infographics, brand story, and A+ Content, should utilize your brand colors and fonts
- Your copy should be in line with your brand voice and tone
- Use thebrand story to highlight….well….your brand’s story, ethics, mission, and vision statement.
- Optimize the technical language in your copy, so it speaks to your brand
- If you’re eligible, replace your existing A+ Content with Premium A+ Content
- Create a unified template for every creative element on your detail page. This will give you a credible and professional look and feel
#2: Off the product detail page
Off-the-detail page branding opportunities ensure that the customer can recognize a brand when they are browsing through the search result pages or looking at Posts on a competitor’s detail page.
Tips from our experts
- Encourage more and more shoppers to click on the “Follow” button. According to Amazon, shoppers who follow a brand on Amazon have a spend frequency that’s 2.3 times higher than non-followers. They also purchase 1.8 times more frequently than nonfollowers. B
- Build an emotional connection with the shoppers using Amazon Posts
- Engage with customers using real-time live streams with Amazon Live
- Using the Customer Engagement tool, create emails with templates and send them directly to Amazon customers who follow your brand
- Use Sponsored Brand campaigns to get the message of your brand seen and heard by your target audience
- Create Sponsored Brands video ads to drive awareness and discovery of your brand and product portfolio within Amazon shopping results.
Create a brand on Amazon in four simple steps
If you want your business to be a memorable brand on Amazon, it is going to take some work. Below we’ve listed some effective ways you can build a brand identity. Understanding them is simple; implementing them is another story. You can either DIY everything or hire an Amazon creative agency like eStore Factory to do the job.
Step 1: Understand what your brand is all about
Before you start building a brand, understand what you’ll be creating, who you’ll be creating it for, and why you are creating it. Jot down on a piece of paper the products you sell, the categories you sell your product in, and what you want to achieve.
Your customers should be able to resonate with what your brand has to offer. To do that, ask yourself the following questions:
Q1: Who is my target audience? You can’t sell a product to a tween the same way you would to an adult. Learning who exactly your audience is essential. To determine your target audience, take a look at Google Analytics, social media insights, or website performance reports and analyze what age, demographic, location, or income group they belong to.
Q2: What are my target audience’s pain points? The next step is to identify your target customer’s pain points and communicate how your product can help them solve them. A flashy logo or sales-inducing copy is really of no use if your product and brand do not address a customer’s pain points.
Q3: What makes my product unique? Is there anything different about your product? What can your product offer that others can’t? Knowing the difference between your product and your competitor’s product is imperative to develop a successful brand.
Q4: What’s my brand’s mission and vision? Be sure to have a clear, direct, and an easy to comprehend mission + vision statement. In other words, know what your brand stands for. If you sell biodegradable waste bin bags, your brand’s mission and vision statements should be able to connect with eco-conscious customers.
Step 2: Start adding branded elements to your creatives
Tools like A+ Content, brand story, and storefront are some of the best ways to increase the visual appeal of your brand. All of these tools are available to Amazon sellers globally and are free to use for all brand-registered sellers.
- A+ Content: According to Amazon, A+ Content encourages repeat purchases and increases sales by an average of 5%. Using A+ Content, brands can help customers make confident purchase decisions by proactively answering their questions, resulting in higher conversion rates, increased traffic, and increased sales when used effectively.
- Brand story: This newly launched feature helps brands connect with their customers by highlighting their unique stories. The Brand Story feature creates a section separate from your product features in a dedicated slot of the detail page called ‘From the brand.’
- Amazon Brand Store: This self-service feature helps brands create an immersive shopping experience for customers. It’s a place for customers to explore, interact, and shop from your brand in a single destination that is owned and maintained by you.
- Video: According to Amazon, 73% of US adults are more likely to purchase after watching a product video, 61% of global consumers say video is important in their purchase decision, and you can see up to 9.7% revenue increase when you add a video to your product listing. Your branded video can show how the product works, highlight the product’s unique features, or display the brand’s mission and vision.
Step 3: Be more visible
A lot of time, effort, and finances go into creating a brand, but your work doesn’t end here. Getting your brand noticed is just as essential as creating the elements. Using tools like Posts, Amazon Live, and Customer Engagement, brands can connect with existing shoppers and generate awareness among new-to-brand shoppers. Below we’ve explained each of these tools in brief:
- Amazon Posts: Posts come in handy when brands want to make the best of their high-quality visual assets, grow their follower base, or build an emotional connection with your brand. They appear in carousels on product detail pages, in content feeds for related products and categories, or on a dedicated page within your Store.
- Amazon Live: Amazon Live is available to all USA sellers with a brand registry. It allows sellers to host high-personality, full-of-energy live-streaming videos that reach Amazon shoppers at scale. Sellers can interact with shoppers in real-time and even share promo codes to encourage on-the-spot purchases.
- Customer Engagement: Customer Engagement is available in the US Amazon store to Brand Owners registered in the brand registry. Brands can send emails specifically for new product announcements and themed email campaigns around seasonally appropriate messages.
- Amazon Sponsored Ads: With Sponsored Ads, brands can reach and connect with high intent shoppers on their customer journey. Sponsored Products can be used to drive awareness and discovery of a brand’s product portfolio within Amazon SERPs. Sponsored Brands can be used to build brand recall and affinity by displaying highly visual ads on the top pf SERPs and within the search results. Sponsored Display is for brands who want to reach relevant audiences across the shopping journey.
Step 4: Protect your brand
Amazon offers advanced tools to protect your brand in the marketplace. Brands can fight and block counterfeits, report violations, and establish automated protections to proactively remove suspected infringing or inaccurate content.
Programs such as Amazon Brand Registry, Transparency, IP Accelerator, Project Zero, and Counterfeit Crimes Unit work together to shield your brand against counterfeits. We highly recommend brands register in each of these programs and take full advantage of the services they have to offer.
Building a brand isn’t enough
Building a brand does not make a product memorable. A brand that establishes itself must consistently deliver excellence, develop credibility among its competitors, and build trust among its customers.
Just like any other aspect of marketing, brand building should be closely monitored so you can know what’s going right and what’s not. Leverage tools like Brand Analytics, Amazon Attribution and Manage Your Experiment to make an informed decision about your product portfolio and marketing activities.
Test, learn, and keep on optimizing until you reach your goals.
Don’t be just another “X” brand selling on Amazon
Your brand identity is being created, whether you are putting any effort into it or not. So why not consciously craft it with a thoughtful, intentional strategy that helps you stand out from the crowd?
Keeping up with Amazon branding trends and taking in every branding initiative Amazon offers can feel like an uphill battle, but you don’t have to do it all alone. Amazon consultants at eStore Factory can help. Our Amazon content agency can help you deploy professional A+ Content, Stores, Posts, and other branded content to support your brand-building endeavor.